Mr. Chris Jones:

I will go first, given that the first half of the question was about the experience of Dwr Cymru Welsh Water. Our non-domestic customers are generally all metered. Our domestic household customers, as the Deputy mentioned, are roughly 50:50 with meter or still pay on the basis of the local government property tax or the rateable value of the property. A small number of customers are not metered because it is technically difficult to do so. In such cases, we have what we call "an assessed charge". We assess what the likely consumption is given the number of people in the household and they pay on that basis.

The household bills, whether they are non-metered or metered, are kept in sync by our pricing formulas. That means a metered customer with the same consumption pays slightly more because of the additional costs of having, maintaining and reading a meter. The vast majority of our metered customers have either moved into a new property or voluntarily asked to be metered. That tends to mean that their consumption is lower than average. In practice, the average bill for a metered customer is less than the average bill for a non-metered customer. The nature of those customers tends to mean that their water consumption is quite a lot less than the unmetered customer. They are either in a new property with more water efficient devices or they have self-selected or opted for a meter as they are a small household. That is how our system works. One pays on the rateable value basis as a default. If one moves into a new property one is metered and, if one wants, one can take up a free option to be metered.